Convertible these days are needed for a creator, artists, or students. But with lots of companies making the same thing, it’s kinda hard to find one that suits your needs. Today we are here to help you make that decision.
1. Lenovo Yoga C930
Right in front of me of the brand-new Lenovo yoga c 930, this looks a lot like the more or less recent yoga 730. The thing you’re probably asking yourself. What are you doing to bring the same laptop on the website? Well, it’s not. It’s different there’s a lot of key features inside of here that make it different from any laptop on the market.
Design
Now first things first the design it’s pretty much the same looking laptop as the 730. But as you can see here the hinge system is a little bit different we’re on the 730. You get one on opposite ends on the 930 you get one long one that spans the back of the laptop. And a smaller one on the left-hand side and I’ll tell you why shortly. Besides that, the edges are still very sharp not nearly as sharp as the 730. But sharp enough that they should be sanded out or a little bit smoother in future releases.
It weighs three pounds or 1.3 six kilograms making this very light to keep in your bag for school, for office, professionals. Anybody who’s basically out all day and doesn’t want to carry a heavy laptop. Design now you can get this an iron-gray which is the color I have here. There’s a second option which is more similar to the 730.
Stylus
The crazy thing about this laptop is the fact that there’s a pen inside of here on the back. There is a pen stored inside think of this laptop as the galaxy note 9 of ultrabooks. You see Microsoft surface has been doing a great job by including a magnet on the side of the laptop to store your pen. But the fact that you’re storing it in the laptop just makes my life so much easier.
Ports and Inside
The port setup is very similar to the 730 except for one key thing. On the left-hand side you have a USB 3.0 port, 2 USB type-c thunderbolt 3 port so you can hook it up to an external GPU and an audio jack. On the right-hand side, you have no ports and that’s because there is a pen which is stored back here. And they had to remove the extra USB 3.0 port.
The c 930 is one of the more easier laptops to open up and not much is upgradeable. You have the m2 NVMe SSD, this is swappable you can replace it with a 2 terabyte NVMe drive. If you want to down the road you have a 60-watt hour battery spanning the bottom of the laptop. This will net you seven to eight hours of use before the need to charge. This is just doing simple productivity browsing the web all the standard stuff that most people do with their laptops.
You have a swappable wi-fi card if you’re not liking the one that’s in here, you can swap it out for something else. But based on my experience it’s been pretty solid. You have two fans cooling the CPU and integrated GPU. I think it’s a fantastic setup they have it on opposite ends to provide a pretty good cooling solution.
Now you’re probably wondering where’s the ram? Well, it’s either soldered onto the motherboard on the opposite side of the laptop. You can only put up to 16 gigabytes inside of here so whatever model you do choose. Make sure it has the amount of ram you want it to.
Display
Now because this is a convertible laptop you can pretty much rotate the display 360 degrees. So you can put in a tablet mode which is great for writing and sketching. You can throw it in tent mode which is great for watching movies. You can put in traditional laptop mode to type up documents or flip the screen all the way around like this to use it as a touch interface.
This is a 14-inch display it is IPS this is full HD but you can also buy this with a 4k panel. Now the other thing to note is the pen it’s 4096 levels of pressure low latency. So writing and drawing on this is an absolute joy. The 720p webcam up top has a camera shutter. So this means when you’re not using the camera you can simply slide it over and block access to the camera.
Audio
So if you’re obsessed with good external sound and you want it in an ultrabook this is the laptop to get. What Lenovo did was placed two speakers on the bottom of the laptop and two speakers in the hinge. Because it supports Dolby atmos with the external speakers you get this 3d soundstage. That completely envelops you it’s one of the most interesting sound experiences I’ve ever had on an ultrabook. Also because the hinge has the speakers in them no matter what position the laptop is in the sound is always facing you. So if you’re someone who wants great sound on their ultrabook who travels a lot and doesn’t have the plug-in headphones. This is the laptop to take a look at.
Keyboard Deck
The keyboard is very similar to the 730 so nothing to report there. It’s using the keys were pretty decent travel distance and the same holds for the touchpad are using windows precision drivers. It’s a good size and overall no complaints with accuracy. Now if you want windows hello you do have the fingerprint scanner on the bottom right. And this will get you in pretty quick performance is pretty amazing on this laptop. I mean you’re not gonna be playing the latest games on this is not a gaming laptop. But it’s a productivity-based machine and just like the 730 you’re gonna get very similar results.
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2. HP Spectre x360 13″
Today we’ll be talking about the hp specter x360, it’s a two and one device that’s relatively popular. Like I’ve seen it around here and there it starts at eleven hundred and fifty dollars on their website. Looking at the specs and what’s included it looks like a really good valley right it’s a twin wind device with a stylus included and a leather sleeve. And the base configuration starts with 256 gigs of storage so they’re not scamming you with a 128 gig drive so that’s the overview of the x 360. This one is the 13-inch version but there’s also a 15-inch version available. I recommend the 13 inches one because imagine holding a massive 15-inch tablet right it’s kind of ridiculous.
Build and Design
The specter is built entirely from aluminum so the keyboard deck is aluminum. The bottom panel is aluminum the hinge is an aluminum piece and so is the screen the grill above the keyboard is super rigid with 0 flex. The keyboard itself though has a little bit of flex but it’s pretty minimal and you don’t notice it. The screen also has an average reasonable amount of flex and overall structural rigidity is pretty good.
Especially given the price point the hinge low is excellent with just the right amount of resistance. You can open it to a laptop, tent, or tablet mode. There’s a bit of screen wobble so it might have been better to tighten up the hinge to reduce that for pen usage. But I haven’t used a two-in-one device with a tight hinge before. So I’m not gonna claim that it’s better.
Display
The screen they’re using is a 1080p touchscreen panel with support for a pen for drawing and writing. The top and bottom bezels are pretty thick but the side bezels are pretty thin. I don’t love the top bezel like the chin is fine but not the top it looks really bad with a thick forehead. The brightness color gamut and color accuracy are all really good actually. I measured the brightness at 375 nits which is quite bright and a delta e of about 1.4.
It was pretty warm out of the box so I would calibrate it if you can but this is an excellent screen. And like I said at the start they also include a pen in the box so it’s not a separate accessory that you have to fork over a hundred bucks for. It’s got a little bit more latency than other pens but given the price, it’s just a minor nitpick. And I enjoy using it when the chance comes up.
Keyboard Deck
The speakers are not located above the keyboard but rather on the bottom and they sound mediocre. I mean aside from firing downwards the drivers themselves just don’t sound that great. It’s a little better in this position where the speakers are now firing upward but the audio isn’t its strong suit.
The keyboard uses a slightly different layout with an extra column of keys on the very most right which adds a couple of extra dedicated function keys. It doesn’t mess with my ability to type like I don’t reach to the right for my enter’ and backspace key. So I’d say it’s got a good layout and these switches feel okay and they’re not my favorite switches. I just seem to make slightly more mistakes on this than some other keyboards. Because it’s easier to accidentally register a keystroke but you eventually learn to adapt to the way it works.
They’re using synaptic drivers for the trackpad which surprised me given that virtually every trackpad in 2019 uses native windows drivers. The hardware itself is good it’s got a glass surface with good feedback. But the most acceleration is sensitive and you don’t get any customizability with synaptic drivers.
Performance
Okay on the inside is the i5 8265u, eight gigs of ram and a 256 gig SSD performance are good. Although I’d recommend 16 gigs of ram if you’re doing any coding or video editing. The drive they’re using is the western digital sn 720, it’s a very fast drive that’s about on par with a Samsung pm 981 and if you pop off the bottom panel. You’ll get access to the two ram slots which they filled right out of the box.
Taking off the bottom panel isn’t exactly easy since these screws are hidden under the two rubber strips. But if you’ve got balls you can rip them off and glue them back on afterward. And surprisingly the thermals are also really good with this thing it’s rarely above 90 degrees on the CPU. And the surface temps are also reasonable so it doesn’t burn your skin. The bottom panel can get pretty toasty if you have it running for a long period. But it never actually gets hot enough to burn and while I’m running my stress test I noticed that the fans don’t ramp up that much. Mostly because it hovers in the mid-70s but yeah it’s got good thermals. The fans are quiet but because of that, the CPU doesn’t hold its boost clock for very long.
Ports
On the left side is your USB a port with the power button being on the corner bit of an odd placement. And on the left are two USB c, a headphone jack, and a MicroSD slot. They include a USB c 2 HDMI adapter in the box but I wish one of the USB c ports was moved to the left for charging on both sides.
Since both of them do support charging and the charger they include is a compact 65-watt charger. That chooses the 62-watt hour battery inside which usually lasts me about eight to nine hours on a single charge. Part of that is just having a bigger 62-watt hour battery where other ultrabooks are sitting in the 50 range.
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3. Samsung Notebook 9 Pro
I’m here with Samsung notebook 9 pro. This is a mainstream laptop that gives you a little bit of everything, but the real standout is the pen support.
Display and Keyboard Deck
So here we are with a notebook 9 pro, and we’re just gonna go through the features from the top. This is a nice, 1920 by 1080 led display, it’s got not only a 720p webcam at the top. But also a face sensor, so you can use this to log in to windows 10 using windows hello. You have here a nice keyboard with little curved keys that I enjoyed using a nice sensitive trackpad.
Performance
Underneath this is the configuration of an intel core i7 7500 u, 16 gigabytes of ddr4 ram, a 256-gigabyte SSD and it’s e-SATA m.2. So pretty fast and it has a discreet Radeon 540 GPU. Now discreet GPUs are still a little hard to find in a laptop. And that’s one reason why this might cost a little bit more than you expect. But what you’re getting with that is some good mid-range gaming performance. You’re not going to play like a super-intensive game on this but if you’re just starting in games this will do just fine.
One thing that I like about this laptop is that even though it has this. Discrete GPU it isn’t that loud the fan. Just is this little discreet that you can barely hear and the vents aren’t like blowing out all this air constantly. So I think Samsung did a good job of balancing the needs of a light gamer. With you know still wanting a mainstream kind of laptop and not a big bulky hot you know real gaming laptop. So here’s another standout feature on this laptop. It has a 360-degree hinge so you can use it in tablet mode or watch a movie in tent mode.
Compared
So as for performance, the notebook 9 pro performed just about in line with what we would expect for a laptop with this configuration. We compared it to the hp Spectre x360 that has almost exactly the identical configuration. And so it did very well in sort of conventional work benchmarks it did pretty well in our GPU intensive tests. And surprisingly well in some of our CPU intensive tests. I would say overall that the performance on this is very good. And one place where it stood out here was in battery life it got 590 minutes of life in our video rundown test. that is a nice long time should get you through a typical workday.
S Pen
As I mentioned before the real standout feature is the pen which is tucked right into the body here. And you might know the s pen if you already use a Samsung phablet or something. It’s got the little button on here and you can summon all the little pin applications you have here right on the screen. And you can do something like writes a note to you and you can see I’ve already scribbled some notes here.
And you can also do screen captures and you can even capture an animated gif which is super fun. You run a video and then stop and capture it and turn it into a gif. It’s easy to do and what I love is that? Samsung you know already had this pen support. And some of their other products and they’re bringing over to windows 10. Which also has pen support, so you suddenly have all these things you can do on your laptop that incidentally, MacBooks can’t do.
Ports
Here are the ports on the laptop. It’s got a USB c on this site as well as a full HDMI which I know my video friends are gonna love. And on the other side, you have a couple of USB a’s for all the USB a product. It’s only three-point eight pounds, which is not that bad as far as weight goes. And the ac adapter is only seven-tenths of a pound more so the whole package if you brought all this with you is only about four and a half pounds which is bearable. And again you’re getting a discrete GPU so you’re gonna hit a little weight, but not that much.
Audio
The only thing I would say about this laptop that I didn’t like is that the speakers. I mean let’s be honest most laptop speakers. Don’t expect very much right there. It’s not a lot of room for them. You’re not gonna get a lot of basses or something the thing with these speakers is that they didn’t seem to have a lot of volumes. I mean I am not going deaf, and I’m like cranking this up and I still feel like I can’t hear the movie. And I was really surprised that with all these other things that Samsung did with the display and the hinge and the keyboard in the discrete GPU. That somehow the speaker’s just got you to know left at the back of the bus.
BUY HERE
4. ASUS ZenBook Flip 14”
The Asus zenbook flip is a 14 inch thin and light 2-in-1 laptop. So you can use it as both a traditional laptop or flip the screen over and use it as a tablet. In this review, we’ll take a look at the features available and help you decide if it’s worth buying.
Specs
Let’s start by checking out the specs in this model. There’s an 8th gen intel 8550u quad-core CPU which runs at 1.8ghz and can boost up to 4ghz with a single core. There’s 16gb of lpddr3 memory running at 2133mhz in dual channel. For the storage, there’s a 256gb m.2 SATA SSD, and for the graphics, there’s no discrete GPU present in this model. So we’ve only got the integrated intel UHD 620 graphics, and we’ll see how this performs later in the benchmarks. But you can also get it with Nvidia mx150 graphics if you need more graphical power.
There’s a 14 inch 1080p 60hz IPS touch screen with a glossy finish. And for the network connectivity there’s intel 8265 wifi and Bluetooth 4.1 support, no ethernet connectivity here, unless you plug in a USB dongle.
Build and Design
The zenbook flip has a grey all-metal design, featuring a matte interior and smooth lid with this circular metal finish. The physical dimensions of the laptop are 32.7cm in width, 22.6cm in-depth, and just 1.39cm in height, so it’s pretty thin. This model is listed at weighing 1.4kg and in my testing, I found this one to weigh just under 1.5kg. And just over 1.7kg with the power brick and cable for charging, so it’s quite portable.
Display
As mentioned earlier the display is a 14 inch 60hz 1080p IPS glossy touch screen. And as an IPS panel, the viewing angles look great from anywhere. I don’t have much experience testing touch screens, but I had no issues while using this one. Just keep in mind your fingerprints will make it dirty fast, so I suggest using the included pen where possible. The touch screen features 10 points multi-touch, and the included pen has 1024 pressure sensitivity levels, so it should be pretty decent for drawing.
I’ve also measured the colors produced by the screen using the spyder 5 pro. And my results returned 93% of srgb, 67% of NTSC and 72% of Adobe RGB. So in terms of color accuracy, it seems fairly good compared to many other laptops I’ve tested. And overall I thought the screen looked quite nice, it can get quite bright although as a glossy display it will easily show reflections.
Display Build
I’ve also performed my usual backlight bleed test, which involves having the screen completely black in a dark room to help emphasize any bleeding. I then take a long exposure photo to display any bleed, so this is a worst-case scenario test. There’s none, little imperfections that only the camera could pick up. To my eyes, even in a completely dark room, it looked perfectly fine, but this will, of course, vary between devices.
There was minimal screen flex while moving the display as it’s solid metal with the hinges towards the corners. While using it I noticed that if you push the screen back to what I’d consider being an average viewing angle. The bottom of the screen comes into contact with the surface underneath, resulting in the back of the device lifting a bit. I’m not sure if this contact with the desk would cause any problems long term. However, it does prevent the rubber feet at the back from touching the desk properly. Meaning that it’s really easy for the back to slide around if you lightly push it.
Keyboard Deck
The chiclet keyboard has 1.4mm of key travel. It has white backlighting and can be adjusted between three levels of brightness, or turned off if you prefer, I had no issues typing with it. There was a little bit of keyboard flex while pushing down fairly hard. And it was a little noticeable while typing if you’re looking for it. But I had no problems with it while typing. The touchpad worked quite well, it was very smooth and gives a satisfying click when pushed down.
Ports
As for the io on the left, there’s a battery power indicator that changes color based on the remaining charge. USB 3.1 gen1 type-a port, volume up and down buttons, and the power button. Over on the right, there’s a micro sd card reader, USB 3.1 gen1 type-c port, no thunderbolt support. Unfortunately, 3.5mm audio combo jack, another USB 3.1 gen1 type-a port, HDMI port, and power input.
There’s nothing at all on the front and nothing on the back other than some zenbook branding. Upon the lid, there’s just the Asus logo in the center with a mirrored finish. Underneath there are some rubber feet on the corners which help prevent it from moving around on flat surfaces. Unless you’ve got the lid open further than about 90 degrees as mentioned, and a small air intake vent towards the back.
The two speakers are found underneath on the front corners, and they sound really good. There’s a fair bit of bass and they’re still pretty clear even at full volume.
Battery and Thermals
Powering the zenbook flip is a 3 cell 57-watt hour battery. And with a full charge and just watching youtube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting off and background apps disabled. I was able to use it for 6 hours and 20 minutes with just the built-in Intel graphics. I thought this was a pretty good result, but this will, of course, different if you have the model with Nvidia mx150 graphics.
During normal use with an ambient room temperature of 25 degrees celsius, the CPU and GPU idled fairly low. And here are the external temperatures of the laptop where you’ll be putting your hands, sitting around 30 degrees.
Benchmarks
Although my model here doesn’t have discrete graphics. I’ve benchmarked a couple of esports games as these usually run on just about anything, just to give you a rough idea of how it holds up.
Dota 2
Dota 2 played alright at minimum settings, I’m testing with a fair resource-intensive replay here so these should be close to a worst-case scenario example.
CS: GO
In cs: go the smoke in the benchmark I’m testing with really killed the frame rate. It was somewhat playable on minimum settings otherwise, but not a great experience.
So less demanding games are sort of playable at minimum settings. But it’s worth keeping in mind this laptop is also available with Nvidia mx150 graphics. And while not amazing it would be a nice step up above the integrated CPU graphics we’re dealing with here if you wanted to do some occasional gaming.
Conclusion
So what did you guys think about the zenbook flip 14 laptops from Asus? This is the first 2-in-1 device I’ve had for review so far. So at this time, I don’t have anything else to compare it with. Overall though I thought that it was a nice machine in terms of build quality. The tablet functionality worked well if that’s something you’re after. And the only issue I had was the lid preventing the rear rubber feet coming into contact with the desk when in laptop mode.
BUY HERE
5. Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630
Because of their nature Chromebooks get used on the go a lot they’re quick to boot up and quick to get into tasks. So people that use them tend to find themselves in places like coffee shops or airports where they don’t have all their extra stuff around. The number of desks, or external display, mouse and all that stuff. So they need one device that can get everything done all in one package may be just right in their lap. And for road warriors like that this might be just the Chromebook.
Build and Design
So let’s start with the build quality of this and it’s something we need to talk about. Because this is a big device 15.6 inches, it’s 17 millimeters thick which is not too bad. But it’s about 4 pounds but it’s solid aluminum and it’s built like a tank and it feels good. The way the finish on the outside of the case feels it’s just really well put together. And exudes quality from top to bottom I liked just handling it in general.
And yeah 15.6 inches is bigger than most Chromebooks but it’s not that big of a device. In general fits in most backpacks no big deal there it is a convertible and that’s important. Because now you’re not going to use this thing as a tablet I mean it’s just ridiculously large as a tablet. But you can fold it into a tent mode or something like that if you’re on an airplane or if you’re in a situation.
Like where you don’t have much space and you just need to use the touchscreen. You can fold it into that display mode in your lap and still get a lot of stuff done. And kind of utilize the touchscreen as you would on an oversized tablet. Overall Lenovo is just done a great job of putting together just a solid Chromebook. That looks every part premium and feels it as well.
Display
Now we can’t talk about this device without talking about what Lenovo put up as its main selling point which is the screen. If you remember when it was announced back in September this device was announced as the world’s first 4k Chromebook.
This one does not have 4k and from what we can hear from Lenovo at this point right now we don’t know when or if the 4k device is even gonna come to the states. So don’t hold your breath for that and don’t let that be a decision-making process you’re gonna wait around for the 4k display.
The good news here is the 1080p display that’s in this particular model and in the model that you can get right now. Looks really really good and just like other Chromebooks that have come out at the end of 2018. It’s just this nice solid full HD sixteen by nine-panel. It’s got great viewing angles and it’s got slim bezels and the colors pop well. And it’s probably about 300 nits which are bright enough for most scenarios that you’re going to be in.
The thing just looks really good as pleasing to the eye and oh by the way when you only push a full HD amount of pixels which is 1920 by 1080. The processor doesn’t have to work nearly as hard to push those pixels around the screen. So you also get the benefit of added performance here and you’re no worse for wear as far as what you’re looking at on the screen.
Keyboard Deck
So accompanying that good screen is a really good keyboard and trackpad combo on this one. The one thing I will say is even though on Lenovo’s website and best buy and pretty much everywhere you see. This thing listed it says it’s backlit it is not backlit. And we can’t get a firm answer from Lenovo on whether or not we’re gonna see that or not.
So I don’t know if their marketing campaign is just confused with what the actual device is. We’re not sure at this point but what I can firmly tell you is that no device I don’t think that you can buy right now is going to be backlit.
So don’t expect that and that is a little bit of a bummer with an overall dark device. It would be awesome to see this thing backlit. Because the keyboard is so good Lenovo has made great keyboards for a long time this is no exception. It’s clicky, travels great and just typing on this thing is just butter.
The trackpad though they don’t tout it as glass I’m pretty sure is etched glass. And so you get a nice smooth, great click and overall just inputting anything on this device feels great. It’s super responsive and I love it. I just wish they would have added backlighting for this.
Ports
Along the sides, you’re met with what has become a pretty familiar port selection a lot of these devices that came out at the end of 2018. All are based on the same baseboard so it’s not surprising that we would see this. But that’s good news here because we’re giving the layout that gives us the USB type-c on both sides. Which can be used for charging, for display, for data transfer on either side.
But then an additional USB type a that can be used for any of your legacy peripherals without needing a dongle to convert USB c. The USB a which is nice and can be handy, you also get a Kensington lock. A headphone microphone jack none of these things are surprising but they’re just nice things to have on your device. And you also get a micro-sd card slot you may not need that though depending on which model of this thing you pick up.
Audio
The speakers on this thing are ok they aren’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. But they’re not great and we’re starting to get some devices that have better speakers in them. Especially with the pixel slate even though it doesn’t do a lot of things well. That one has some speakers that I love listening to stuff on. This one does not fall in that camp they’re just laptop speakers so don’t expect anything crazy with them.
Storage
As I said just a second ago you may not need that micro-sd card slot that’s because inside of this thing with the Core i5 model. You’re getting a hundred and twenty-eight gigs of internal storage so I’ll a pixel book and a couple of other devices that have come out. It’s also paired up with eight gigs of ram and this is the core i5 that is u series. So if you’re confused by intel’s naming schemes weak on r2 we have to look this stuff up a lot.
U Based Processor
But in general u series so as u in the model name anywhere that means. It’s a fand processor it means it absorbs a little bit more power as it’s doing its tasks. And it needs a fan to keep it cool that also means it’s a lot more powerful it’s more of a desktop-class processor. And that’s what this has in it so there’s a core i5 and a Core i3 model that you can get. The Core i5 has 128 gigs of storage, the core i3 that Lenovo sells comes with 64 gigs of internal storage.
Either one of those is a lot for chrome os the operating system doesn’t take up room and honestly you just don’t need that much storage on Chromebooks. They want you to do cloud computing in general. And so 128 gigs of storage for me personally has always just been so much more storage than I ever even think about needing. So yeah you may need that MicroSD card slot if you store everything on local drives and stuff like that. But in general most users 64 gigs are plenty and this thing just flies with that internals.
BUY HERE
6. Samsung Chromebook Plus V2
Today I do not want to spend a lot of time on specs or pricing. Instead, I want to concentrate on the functionality and performance of the device. I have been used in this Chromebook for some time now and I’m ready to give you some additional feedback on the hardware and operating system. That might be helpful to you if you’re considering this device.
Display
The first thing I want to talk about is the display. The display of the Chromebook plus v2 measures 12.2 inches and has a full HD resolution. I have found this site to be a great compromise for most situations. At just over 12 inches you get some good real estate to get some work done these apps or just surf the web.
Another aspect of this display design that I like is the size of the bezels. Nowadays we tend to see devices in the market with bezels that are either too large or too thin. Instead, Samsung went with just what’s needed to offer a good handheld tablet experience. While maximizing the display size
Moving on when it comes to displaying resolution I found this device to be okay. But not great after some long-term use this may be more of personal preference. But I do notice a difference in screen quality when I switch from a different device. My eyes are also seeing the difference more often since most of my other devices and displays are now 4k.
The colors and contrast are good but it’s just not a great display. I wish the device had a larger resolution on the other hand at 1920 by 1200 the display is more efficient for battery durability. In regards to battery life, I have been getting anywhere from 9 to 10 hours on a full charge.
But this is going to vary depending on the type of applications you’re running. This is an all-day Chromebook for most users which makes it a good device to travel with. Most people should be happy with battery life.
Ports
An area where the Samsung Chromebook plus v2 excels is in port selection and connectivity. There are plenty of ports to work with I try connecting to multiple hard drives and everything worked as it should. The standard MicroSD card slot it’s also a nice touch for those of us who are constantly working with cameras. And want to be your transferring media files the same can be said about external accessories. I was able to set up a basic workstation with a mouse a keyboard and a monitor. And compatibility was not an issue this, in my opinion, is an important aspect of any two-in-one device.
Keyboard
Moving on to the keyboard and original comments still stand. The typing experience is good and in combination with the touchpad. You will have the chance to get some work done in the go also although I’m not begging to keyboard shortcut keys. I do find myself using the shortcut keys that Samsung added on the top row very often. These are very helpful to switch between screens, change the display brightness. Or to maximize the screen at any point in time.
It is a nice keyboard layout that will satisfy most users. Under the keyboard, you will find the two speakers that in my opinion are pretty decent at this price point. Their location is not ideal if you’d like to use the Chromebook on your lap but I do understand the space limitations. Speakers are plenty loud for me and I have been happy with the sound quality.
Performance
Now let’s move on to the chrome operating system and overall performance of this device. This Chromebook powers up automatically once you open the screen and loading times are very fast. Right up front, I can tell you the Samsung Chromebook Plus v2 has been running smoothly with no lag or glitches. I have the core m3 processor and he seems to be a nice match to the operating system.
I still recommend you get the core m3 over the Celeron processor. Just for performance alone, my only issue with internals is the fact that you get a seventh-generation Core m3 processor. Instead of an eighth-generation processor considering Samsung releases Chromebook late 2018. I was expecting more up-to-date specs. Still, this new configuration offers good performance improvement over the previous models.
BUY HERE
7. XPS 15 2-in-1
This is the XPS 15 two and one it’s not designed to replace the original XPS 15. They’re still making those it’s more of like a supplementary device for people that want something a little more versatile. That can do like different modes and stuff like this so it’s a thin and light.
Overview
One device that’s using the new cable 8g processors so those have the AMD GPUs with the Intel CPUs. It’s a very powerful system in a small package so when you use this thing in tablet mode it’s not exactly the most comfortable thing. If you’re gonna handhold it if you have just placed down for taking notes. Or just doing things as alike rested tablet perfect but if you’re gonna hold this thing it’s a little bit.
It’s comfortable it’s usable but it is big it’s just a 15-inch screen is never great for a handheld tablet device. But you can use it in tent mode or presentation mode you can pop it up to watch a movie, you can play games, you can connect up a controller or a mouse and a keyboard. It’s a nice experience to be up and close to your screen doing stuff.
Now the speakers are located in the back here it’s not the best location. The speaker sound okay I mean if there’s a difference between the regular XPS 15 speakers and these it’s not a substantial difference. They sound okay but the location isn’t great and especially you have an in tablet mode or something it does muffle the sound.
Ports
The ports on this device are all USB c so there’s four of them. There’s two on each side and there’s four-lane PCIe support. If you’re curious about external GPUs there’s no u spa and there’s only a MicroSD slot which is a little weird to me. Because I feel like this is a device that’s great for creatives and those are the type of people that would use an sd slot. But yeah you’re stuck with micro sd the charging is used pc and we also have a battery indicator that we see on XPS products.
Display
Okay, the display this is on the 4k panel because that’s the one that I have here is an excellent display. It’s very bright very color accurate you’re gonna like it. The original XPS 15 screen was already good so expected good it’s even better than I thought it would be. It’s not as bright as a MacBook pro screen but I mean I prefer the screen over the MacBook pros. It’s just more color accurate it’s just a nicer looking image to me. There’s also a dedicated pen for the two and one device low latency useful for creatives and students. The nib feels good to me it reminds me of a surface product it’s got a little bit extra to it.
Keyboard Deck
The webcam still located on the bottom it’s got that standard like up nose angle from the XPS products. But because it’s a two and one you can flip it into tent mode and now we have a normal looking image. You also have windows hello for facial recognition and there’s also a fingerprint sensor at the top of the keyboard.
So this keyboard is a maglev keyboard it uses magnets to raise each key. So instead of spring or switch, it uses magnets to give each key resistance. And it’s one of those more interesting features the purpose of this tech is to reduce the thickness of this laptop. So you don’t have a switch you don’t have a dome you shave a couple of millimeters off of the base.
Now how does it feel?
Honestly, when you first use it it’s gonna be a little bit different but you get used to it quickly. It feels not like a butterfly switch from the apple keyboards but it just feels different the way that a butterfly switch felt. Different from a regular chiclet keyboard this also feels different in its kind of way it’s really hard to describe this. But you’ll get used to it that’s the only thing that matters you get used to this thing very quickly after like 24 hours 48 hours of using it.
The trackpad is great it’s your standard XPS trackpad glass surface with great tracking and good button mechanics. Now there is a glitch that I noticed and I think it’s a software thing if you have three keys pressed down at the same time. Like they have to be together at the same time which probably won’t happen very often but if you do you sometimes get other keys registering. That you didn’t even press it all it’s infrequent and the reality is you’re probably not spamming three keys at once together very often. But it is a thing right now hopefully they patch it soon.
Inside
Now if you want to get inside here it’s easy to kind of like entering the XPS products. Bunch of screws on the bottom pops right off and inside you have a removable drive which is great. The killer wi-fi card again which I also don’t love. The battery life is not what I expected it’s pretty big battery 75 watt-hours. But the battery life was short. And I’m not sure if this is a software thing. Or a driver thing or something that can be improved over time. But right now I’m getting around five hours of battery life at 215. It’s on a 75-watt hour battery which is a little weird to me.
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